I did it! I reached over 50,000 words in the month of November. For those of you wondering what I’m talking about, it’s NaNoWriMo.

The month was a crazy one: Moving everything we own one weekend, working on a church project every night another week, and of course, the Thanksgiving holiday with family. On top of having a full-time job. I spent the last week getting up at 5:00 a.m. to catch up on my word count. And strangely enough, it turned me into a morning person. Which I now love!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to write about this last Thursday–I was sick for an entire week. Which brings me closer to the point of this post…

I felt like the evening was a complete waste. And I was frustrated because I had no idea why. Well….. Having spent every spare minute in the last six months working productively and intentionally toward huge goals, I have reprogrammed myself. Just like a person can “become” a morning person (see Michael Hyatt‘s post, How to Become a Morning Person), a person can become other things. I am becoming purposeful, intentional, and productive.

So now I’m struggling with conflicting feelings about the “new me”. I’m excited because being purposeful, intentional, and productive will propel me toward my future goals, life dreams, and crossing things off my bucket list. But I’m also a little saddened because I wonder if I will never feel relaxed again. But my husband reminded me, relaxation could just be redefined.

All in all, even if I have lost the ability to feel relaxed doing “nothing”, I am beyond excited at the future accomplishments and realization of dreams before me!

When we first moved into our apartment, we figured it would be about a month before we moved the rest of our stuff over from storage. As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re using a couple camping chairs, sleeping bags, and a cooler as a coffee table.

Unfortunately, we had to use the money we saved up, to pay for car repairs. Then, we received a “house-warming” monetary gift that would cover moving expenses–Thank you!! Time-wise, moving didn’t work for another month. We enjoy camping….but our backs are starting to complain after sleeping on the floor for two months. So we were really looking forward to getting our stuff this weekend or the next! But. It’s not going to happen.

Something has blocked every effort we have made, every option we have considered. For some reason it feels like God doesn’t want us to get our stuff yet. It feels weird to write that thought out, for everyone to read. It doesn’t seem to make sense that God would care about post-poning our move date.

But for some reason he does. There’s just no other way to explain it.

I was disappointed at first. But realizing something about this has to do with God, makes me okay with it.

What do you do, or how do you feel when something seems unexplainably blocked in your life?

My husband went to our old house a couple days ahead of me, to get some much needed packing done. I left work Friday and drove straight there. When I arrived, some people were in the middle of loading up a couple trucks. One of our closest friends had been there for several hours, working like a beast. I was surprised to see the other two: the guy who would be moving into our house and one of his friends. Everything was plowing right along, so I decided to join them in my work clothes (I think that’s the biggest work-out my heels have gotten!)

We finished unloading the trucks after dark, and everyone headed home. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the house, we discovered the garage door was jammed. The two guys were driving by, so my husband flagged them down and asked if they knew anything about garage doors. Even after hours of loading and unloading, they fixed the problem for us.

Saturday we tied up loose ends in town, started packing the random things that were left, and tackled the cleaning. While eating lunch, we found out the family moving into our house was stuck between a rock and a hard place: Originally, they planned to move Monday. The people moving into the house they were leaving, had to be in by April 1st. But, those people had just showed up with their first load of stuff.

We told them they could park their trailers at our house and we would try to be out that day. Now we no longer had Sunday to finish cleaning, or to move our last load.

We went back to work. We didn’t even stop for supper. It was past midnight, and we finally finished!

As we were loading our truck to find a place to “camp”, the family offered to let us stay the night and said they wished they had known we hadn’t eaten, because they would have shared some of their ribs. It was very sweet of them, but weirdly enough we were looking forward to sleeping in the back of our truck.

Campin' in a Truck Bed

First we headed to the next town, hoping there might be a fast-food drive still open. Nope. Even the gas station was closed. Then we drove to a nearby reservoir, to camp. As soon as we parked, we could hear machinery chugging away. That was going to keep us up. So we drove to the county lake. There were signs posted everywhere saying you had to have a permit to camp. Fortunately, we had a friend who own property out there. So we parked on their property, and my husband texted them at 1:00 am to make sure we had their permission. We did.

We’ve camped several times before in a tent. But never before in the back of a truck. We woke up very refreshed. It was a beautiful morning!

We swung by the house to pick up the electric keyboard we kept in the garage overnight. The couple came out to chat and help load the keyboard and other stuff we were taking with us.

Whenever we have interacted with that couple, they have impressed me more each time! I am glad we were able to help them out.

We still do not have a place to live. Though, we do have a prospect. We are looking at a renovation home. We do not know yet if it’s a go because there are a couple things that need to be checked out first, and renovation home loans take much longer to process than a regular home loan. But if it’s what God wants for us, it will work out.

Meanwhile, we will be moving out of my husband’s brother and sister-in-law’s finished basement. And moving in with my husband’s mom. This has definitely been a transitional stage of life. I don’t think anyone grows up saying, this is what I want to do when I grow up. But here we are. It’s definitely been an adventure. And we’re learning more and more how to lean on God and claim His promises each day!